Harry Potter and the Curse of Hamunaptra
by Zenzao
Summary: It's been a long two years since Voldemort was killed again within the Atrium of the Death Eater-controlled Ministry of Magic, and Harry is still searching for a way to remove his spirit altogether, suffering from bouts of memory that overtake him at their whim. His journey has lead him chasing after a faded rumor, a distant myth in the land of Egypt, and the last chance he has.
1. Chapter 1: Misguided Searching

Trudging through sand was hardly how he had expected the last two months of his life to go, relying on the words of an ninety-some-odd-years-old and retired-treasure hunter to once set eyes upon _it_.

The map in his back-pocket showed traces of the same tainted magic as the destination was supposedly saturated within, and that alone proved to be the only reason he was still out here beneath the suns baking heat on the final ghost-trail available any more.

Two years had passed him by since his final confrontation with Lord Voldemort in human guise, two years that were thus spent attempting to purge the immortal's remaining spirit from the earth.

Few enough spells existed that were capable of harming the human soul; of what little he had been able to research and track down it seemed that you could only harm it while still alive and housed in flesh and blood. A naked spirit was incapable of being burned, torn, pierced, or purged by any outside force that was not tied into such.

Thus his path to explore the one clue left unchecked from all of the research, and left until last because of how unlikely it was to even exist, little more than a black rumor in the abysmally minimal texts he had read through; the _Book of Amun-Ra_, lost to the Egyptian mystics over three thousand years before his own time.

If it's supposed prowess was as true as written than even Voldemort could not withstand the binding contracts inscribed within the pages.

The annotations mentioned that it had been unearthed in the earlier twentieth century by flat chance in _a_ city of the dead, whose name was still bound by magic to remain unwritten and unspoken of.

Harry knew of many cities of the dead scattered throughout the very abundant Egyptian deserts, oh did he know this well.

He also knew that his scavenging had gathered the attention of several others, be them wizard or Muggle alike, and despite his best efforts to avoid further notice their almost silent footfalls continued to creep along at a steady pace surrounding him.

He had no relief from their unnerving tracking skills even after donning his fathers cloak and levitating over the maddening sand; a fact he suspected was due to the same magical eye as Mad-eye Moody possessed to be among his followers, or at least the same charms and spells.

Regardless, he was running out of cities of the dead to investigate.

Each time he finished with one the map was marked, and if further progress ground to a halt with the final known location... he was willing to take certain measures to ensure the time and effort was not wasted.

On the fourth night since he had entered this section of the Egyptian deserts, and after raiding the eighth city of the dead to no avail, Harry set up his usual precautionary wards and settled down for the night with his thoughts revolving around the map, the jumbled words of the retired treasure hunter Carnahan-something or another, and the desperate plea not to venture there once the Imperius curse had been lifted from the Muggle's mind.

_That_ conversation hung in his own even now quite clearly, be it from unconscious guilt or some other quality of his persona he could not place, and closing his eyes Harry allowed his memory to fully materialize once  
>more.<p>

* * *

><p><em>"<em>You do not know that which you seek_! _It_.. _it is a haunted place_, _the city of the dead_, _it_.." the old and wrinkled man trailed off slowly, words tumbling out of his mouth as the curse urged him on, and yet something greater prevented him from saying all that he desired of the situation._

_A prior binding would have made the most sense.  
><em>

"There are those who wander the edges of that sacred place and will kill you a thousand different ways for daring to set foot there, to even wake the air slumbering for sixty years hence within the city_!" The aged treasure hunter told him desperately._

_Harry did not unduly care. He had been sought after by Death Eaters for all of his school years and even now_, ___when the few remaining dared to seek retribution beneath Voldemort's waking spirit and avenge their __mostly-deceased __master___.__

_Fear of death did not matter to him, it was an very nearly an emotion beneath his notice at this point in his life._

_ "_I thank you for the warnings_, _Mr_. _Carnahan_, _ but worse beasts and figures of far greater range have failed to slay me_."_

_ That was not entirely true, if he felt like being honest, but his own darkest-secret was tucked away beneath a treasure trove of dead-ends and memories._

_"_I will find the particular city of the dead you once laid eyes upon and collect the fabled _Book of Amun Ra__; _I have all the time in eternity to seek it out_. _Now tell me what you remember of the surroundings_, _of the landmarks_, _and of the stars in the autumn-night sky_." He had demanded in a cool tone and subtle twitch of his holly and phoenix feather wand._

_The truth- and more than just that, in fact, quite a bit more including the fact that a replication of the map to that place could be found in the Museum at Cairo, spilled from the other man's lips then and it was only the most dire of facts that he could not give at an unconscious level before the oaths sworn took effect. _

_He no doubt had no idea he had even sworn them; memory charms had such a nifty ability in mending such concerns._

_After ten minutes Carnahan gave him the whereabouts of the museum depository where the map of the dead rested, and at twelve since the conversation began Carnahan was once more sitting alone and nursing a headache with out ever realizing he had given so much to a dark haired youth._

_When the map vanished a short while later, and unknown to Harry, Jonathon Carnahan was taken in and questioned by the local Unspeakables' until his mind had broken beneath so much strain and age, and they soon realized what had happened._

_ Further unbeknownst to the young English wizard was that he had become their next rather-hastily sought for target._

_But if he had known? _

_He would have stopped and invited them to try._

_ The British Unspeakables' had done little enough to prevent Voldemort from seizing control of the Ministry four years ago at the height of his revival, and their secrets and wards failed to stop him__ as well when Harry invaded and murdered the half-blood bastard in the now-infamous Atrium Duel._

* * *

><p>It came as an unpleasant surprise, thus, to open his eyes again and fully emerge from the memory to find that he was surrounded by those who had haunted his footsteps day by day and night by night.<p>

"I wondered when you would finally show the nerve to confront me," he began and reached for the aspect of magic deep inside of his chest that he often used when his wand was out of his reach.

He found nothing to grasp there.

"Well. How pleasant." He said irritably and without undue concern; they would have _probably _murdered him already if they wanted that done.

One of them leaned forward and pressed a spear tip against his lips to silence him before rattling off something in a string of Arabic instead of the local dialect, something of which Harry took note of despite his precarious situation.

Another of them dug through his bags to little avail, and when they could not find whatever it was they sought the one with the spear slashed it out to the side in a sharp snap, leaving behind a thin triangular gap in the edge of his mouth and a further line down his cheek that leaked a dozen rivulets of blood.

"Ow, you stupid camelfucker!" Harry growled out of the other side of his lips as he drew one hand up and pressed the edge of his pillowcase against the wound to staunch the bleeding, one eye screwed up at the lance of pain mere touch sent surging through his torn flesh.

They let him do so and ignored the insult for the moment, and the one who had cut him spoke up again through a very rough English tone.

"How do you hold magic? Our efforts strip magic of you," he said strongly and looked toward one of the other men in the back of the tent for confirmation of something before adding, "we sense it and should not."

For a moment he considered wondering about that, but his temper flared and he gave another and more limited insulting retort.

"Piss off." Harry returned with as minimal lip movement as he could.

That was not well received as the man with the spear stabbed it down and through his non-wand hand and successfully pinned him to the plateau of stone previously conjured that night.

Harry's eyes dilated and he clenched his teeth shut to swallow back the shout of pain and, beneath this, fury.

The slightest vibration roared with agony so deep that he forgot about his mouth and gripped his injured hand about the wrist tightly, and his Occlumency training did little when he couldn't let go of his emotions long enough to concentrate.

"Tell us!" Urged the man as he gave the spear a slight twist against the stone beneath and further shredded muscle, grating against bone.

It took him a minute and another mind-numbing quarter-twist before he could isolate his thoughts enough to speak.

Harry looked past the one responsible for his misery and spoke through gritted teeth and in a very taut tone to the one sitting down on a pile of conjured rugs near the entrance of the tent, "Ancient magic, blood and soul magic, cast by others for _and_ against me. I have no control over them, but I can promise you _this_; when I get this spear out of my hand, I'll be calling on one who _can_."

Spear-man twisted the blade back the way it had come and finally succeeded in drawing out a howl from the younger wizard, and then at a harsh command from his superior planted a foot over the wrist and hand around it for support before tearing the jagged metal tip free in a splatter of blood.

Two more short orders and a pair of lesser serfs rushed forward with strips of gauze and a bag of unpleasant smelling salves, one holding Harry down and shunting a block of wood between his snarling lips to bite down on as they staunched the blood loss and tended to his hand with soft and short chants.

They did so hastily and not with any gentleness or particular care, but when they had finished and completed whatever lesser spells that were required the rush of blood had ceased and he could move his fingers again without wanting to scream.

Once that was done they pulled the wood from his mouth and pressed a typically foul smelling salve into the bleeding line at the corner of his lips, and the burn of it as flesh was rapidly re-knitted together underneath their words left him feeling even more unhappy. Being drawn to his feet by them did not help his mood improve.

"Be that as it may, Harry Potter, your actions here have violated the sanctity of our accords within the ICW. The only reason you are still breathing is to your, if I may borrow the term of the deceased Mr. Carnahan, _anal _degree of caution and care as you tore through our cities." Spoke the eldest man in the back, he whom the others took their cues from.

Harry's first retort leaped to his tongue and he only just swallowed it back as he processed his name being spoken aloud.

'_So these arseholes know more than they let on. Fine, let's get the rest of the unpleasantness dealt with!_' he thought as he shrugged lose of the serfs' grip.

"Sounds great; Happen to know the _name_ of the city I'm looking for? It would save us all a grand deal of trouble in the end!" Harry responded heatedly to the unexpected kink in his plans.

The elder man shook his head and gave a grim laugh, one which the others slowly gathered in for a long minute before they returned to solemn silence once more, and he answered.

"No, Harry Potter, I would not tell you that name even if I could. We have good reason to fear that which dwells there. I _will_ tell you that we are returning to Cairo so that a trial may be held within _our _Ministries to determine if you will continue to live and, if so, to what degree of pain must be extracted in punishment for your thievery." He said.

During the short break as they had their laugh Harry had managed to clamp down on his temper and slink behind his mental shields at last, and he nodded once at their words.

"Yeah, alright. Mind if I say something in my defense here and now?" he questioned, and at the short if irritated nod said, "If you know my name than you know what I've had to struggle against these last years, and you know that Voldemort is still hanging around back in England."

He paused to work out his words before continuing after a few moments.

"I can't figure out any other way to banish his spirit to whatever afterlife it deserves without that _Book_, and the longer I delay the more likely it is his followers will pull off the same black magic ritual to revive him as they did several years ago."

He took another breath and continued, "Prophecy dictates that one of us has to off it by the others hand, and as it stands if you _do _kill or maim me rather drastically than Voldemort will sweep across the world like a plague unchecked. Do you dare to take that risk?" he asked them flatly.

The grim expression on the leader's face did not change by a large margin as he responded to that, "Thank you for that piece of information. We will take it into account at the trial and consider how best to purge his earth-bound soul, if you perish in the process."

Harry nodded tiredly and resigned himself to a long and unpleasant trip. He was not disappointed.

* * *

><p>They trekked far across the desert that night until the morning dawn began to appear on the edge of the horizon, a dusky gold and red hued line preparing to pierce the blue night with its brilliance.<p>

Two of the men in front raised curled black wands and whispered out their intentions in more Arabic, and the sparse white clouds began to multiply and thicken until the whole sky was filled by them as far as the eye could make out, like a silent thunderstorm preparing to soak the land.

Harry contemplated their mysterious usage of magic and to what purpose it could serve, veiling them in further night for a time, but as the sun rose further over the next half an hour and its rays were reduced to a sickly gray twilight the answer began to come together.

'_Whatever they did to me might crumble under direct sunlight, or at least morning sunlight. Not unlikely given certain wards. I'll find out if they let it clear or not over the next few hours._' He thought.

Fatigue was growing in his shoulders and beneath the ache in his soles as they walked unendingly through the thick desert sands, but he had suffered much the same in his tasks throughout the last of his school years.

He let his body drift without allowing conscious-thought to dictate the motions and forced his mind to focus.

_Used to be easier with Voldemort's magic to concentrate on,_ he thought after a few minutes and still some degree of awareness of the swing of his arms, the stamp of each foot, and above all the grating feel of loose sand all throughout his boots and socks.

Eventually, however, he managed to succeed despite his fatigue, and he used that precious time to go over his situation and how best to evade it over the next few arduous hours.

When, at last, they descended along a mountainous pass the leader halted the lot of them and Harry's feet kept him walking for a few steps before he was drawn to a stop by one of the others, in turn alerting him to pay attention once more.

He found out why when they were all pushed together, one hand on the others shoulder, and with the distinct feeling of a hook latching into his naval both Harry and his unwelcome guides were Portkeyed to the next destination.

After arriving at the distant edges of a district he was dimly aware of as Coptic Cairo Harry was shuffled along through shadowed alleys, kept closely away from the morning rays and their radiant golden light.

In the end they had to settle for wrapping him head to foot in the same heavyset black cloths as they were used to wearing, with a mask of cloth concealing even his eyes from the sun and wearing out gloves taken from one of the others.

He was further guided along until they reached the Babylon Fortress, and unseen or at the least undisturbed if anyone did notice, they sank inside the withered outer walls and emerged into a drastically altered inner realm.

He would have been impressed had he been able to see almost any of it properly.

Ten minutes thereafter and he was sinking into a stone seat at the heart of a small court room, his mask removed and the other borrowed clothing vanished in the process, with bright green torches illuminating everything.

The various men stood by the closed double doors of aged and blood scarred sandstone, while more still slipped inside from upper balconies to watch.

The eldest of those to capture him took a seat in the middle of the wall and began to explain for those gathered what had been done, what was intended to be done, and so on and so forth that would ultimately end in the foreign and younger wizards beheading in all probability.

Harry nodded whenever his name arose and silently smiled on the inside. Their mask of cloth had not been so thick as they had desired, and around the inner fingers the gloves that had accompanied it were too thin as well.

In short;

With the clouds overhead shifting occasionally sunlight had reached his skin despite their best efforts, and like a leach drawn to fresh blood his flesh drank the weakened rays as greedily as it could.

He once more had a very minimal trickle of his old magic rekindling in his core, and that lone tendril was all he needed to nurture in order to escape from the situation that they were railroading him into given another minute or so to establish the connection.

He gained that minute by reiterating his earlier statements on his situation, in part to annoy the court and in part to make sure he was well and ready for the nonverbal-spell, and at the end he added something he felt was very much needed, "As I told your spear-man at the time, I intended to call the one who could control the very magics your people couldn't do one whit about. I didn't lie."

And with a wide grin despite his fatigue, Harry vanished in a blinding flash of white and red flames coiling about his upper body.

When they were able to see through the image scoured into their retinas the men along the upper balcony and their lesser contemporaries waited to hear the orders of the eldest man.

"Activate the measures. For the first time in over a thousand years, we will condemn a man to living mummification, but _not_ that of the fallen priest. We have learned _that _lesson well from our ancestors!" he ordered in a nearly emotionless tone as they began to lock down the entrances and exits to their Ministry.

* * *

><p>Harry reappeared elsewhere in the Egyptian Ministry of Magic, and now away from his captors he was able to reach into the mokeskin pouch bound to his neck and retrieve the Pepper-up Potion in its unbreakable vial.<p>

He downed the burning fluid quickly and stood up straighter as his face flushed and steam leaked out of his ears.

The phoenix trilled cautiously as the walls began to thrum, distracting him from the burn marks along his robes and the slight oozing of blood from the front and back of his shoulders where Fawkes' talon's had gripped him tightly.

He shot the majestic creature a grateful smile and welcoming thoughts, which were returned in kind before the phoenix soared ahead some way and toward the sunlight streaming through a window up ahead.

Harry watched as the last of Dumbledore's gifts to him began to scout out the area until the red and gold plumage was no longer in sight, and it was about that point that he stepped through into another hall.

As he passed into it the navy-black Anubis statue within drew itself off of the pedestal of matching stone it had rested upon with a creak of unseen muscles jarring against one another for the first time in a long while, and then it drew the stone scimitar hanging from the left hip and attempted to behead him with a wide-mawed snarl.

Harry ducked and rolled to avoid decapitation and shoved his fingers back into the opening of the pouch, coming up with a slight curse as the object of his desire slipped out of reach.

_'I'd very nearly forgotten what it felt like to have my life at stake,_' he thought as his heart hammered against his pulse in full awareness of the danger, '_perhaps bearing an eternal link to Voldemort's magic so long as he wanders the living realms is more a curse than the gift I used to utilize it as..._'

He was dragged from his thoughts as the scimitar whistled over his head, the Anubis statue's slash missing only by what felt to be a millimeter, and at the moment he felt his fingertips come into contact with the hilt a three clawed foot kicked him with its far greater reach.

Harry soared through twenty feet of open air and only stopped moving when he hit the solid slab of gold at the end of the hall with a disheartening _crunch_.

The pain of his shoulder coming free of the associated socket blinded him for a long second, and he rolled along the floor onto his back to try and shove it back into position to no avail

The living granite and ceramic mixture stalked across the distance in a span of roughly ten seconds, each click of the claws enunciated clearly through the air.

With a harsher exclamation Harry dragged his feet up under him and slammed the loose joint back into position against the same slab that had dislodged it, and spittle flew from his lips as his head arched back in a silent scream while flickers of red bled over his vision and the tangy taste of metal crept over his tongue.

Nearly ill from the combination of pains and loss of magic he had suffered over the last night, his fingers finally drew that which he sought from the pouch as if in slow motion, and the silver gleam reflected the dim light in the hall as the air began to whistle in warning of the scimitars path.

A solid _thunk _rang out as the flat of Gryffindor's ruby-incrusted Sword caught the enchanted stone and halted the weightier weapons flight, even as Harry himself was pressed flat against the object at his back and the muscles in his chest were bruised by the motion.

For a moment the statue paused, and then it readjusted its aim and swung again.

Harry grunted and twisted the still-half-drawn sword in his grip, pressing the edge toward his opponents weapon and then grimacing in satisfaction as the basilisk-venom in addition to the goblin-wrought steel cut through the stone sword as if it were nothing.

He made sure to clench his muscles and support the wrist with his other arm to avoid having the deadly edge slammed back into his chest as the flat of it had been just moments prior.

Once more the jackal-faced enemy paused to reconsider its choice of actions, and Harry finished drawing his weapon with a flourish that ended with the statues upper half of the torso to the tips of the ears being split down the middle cleanly.

Both halves leaned away from one another as the upper body leaned back precariously, the runic spells inscribed along the figure crumbling as it sank to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Fawkes brilliant plumage roared back into the area as he pushed off to look at the golden inscribed Ancient Egyptian at his back.

Something akin to disbelief flickered into his emotions as he stared at the old runes.

'_This is too easy..._' he thought uneasily as his eyes digested the names of each city of the dead he had visited so far. One would lead into the other, and the respective constellations of the night sky were noted beside or beneath it if there was little enough room.

He found that which he sought at the very bottom of the slab; its name had been scoured free not very long ago, in terms of decades, and those of the guiding-measures toward it were equally ill-removed.

"I think our journey just became a lot shorter, Fawkes," he said tiredly as he brought up Gryffindor's Sword and cut into the gold with some effort.

Several minutes later and the lost name to _the_ city of the dead sat within his mokeskin pouch.

"If it's under a Fidelius Charm as is probable given the hell its been to locate, I have the original directions right here. I think it's time we returned to our search, my friend."

* * *

><p><strong>End Chapter One.<strong>


	2. Chapter 2: Toward Revival

Two hours later and the chase had officially kicked off.

It seemed more or less atypical of wizards no matter what race they belonged to to overlook those beneath them; it happened all the times with House-elves, and Dumbledore's phoenix was just another creature; an impossibly rare creature, yes, but merely a beast nevertheless in the eyes of so many.

The British Ministry of Magic and even Hogwarts itself had no defense against them, not truly anything of serious merit.

It would seem the sentiment was carried by the Egyptian Ministry as well given Fawkes ability to flit in and out even after they raised their wards, but the Ancient Pharaoh's were not so single-minded.

Over every city of the dead that Harry had raided and returned from empty-handed had resisted the phoenix and kept Fawkes teleportation at bay.

That, coupled with the anti-Disapparition field that ran the majority of the desert, had left Harry trekking by foot for much of his journey to date.

Harry now ran his mind over the constellations surrounding the cities he had been to and the map where he had marked them off, and in time he was able to pinpoint the method to their ideology in choosing a location.

It took him precious time that he did not have readily available to waste, but he knew where he would find _the_ city of the dead at, where the _Book of Amun-Ra_ could be acquired at last.

"I may not know your name, but your location shall be revealed to me at last."

He went over the information again, then called up to the circling swan-sized bird to get its attention and said, "We fly to _this_ point, Fawkes. Can you figure that out from the map? Can you adjust the information accordingly?"

Fawkes trilled solemnly as golden eyes examined the location on the map that had been marked out and blinked twice, and offering the long tail feathers as had been done many years previous, the two of them ascended into the sky and off to the known-unknown location.

Some distance behind them and covering the distance at a far more remarkable pace than they had demonstrated previously, the same Unspeakables' to have questioned Carnahan along with their lesser and original cousins, the Egyptian equivalent to the Aurors in the Medjai, of whom had captured Harry, followed.

* * *

><p>His feet dragged the sand as he looked over the sunken pits and traitorous footing around the area. Fawkes circled nearby only a couple of feet overhead, trilling a continuous melancholic note of concern.<p>

"So this is the fabled city..." he trailed off uncertainly.

They _had_ come upon it as if from nothing, but all he could see within was empty and desolate ruin.

Whatever statues and monuments that once stood there had been destroyed by some kind of catastrophic vault.

A residual sense of death paced the arid air and a faint moan upon the whispering wind left him feeling uneasy as he walked cautiously along the sands, however.

"Something terrible happened here; that's a good sign that this is the right place, but a bad omen to what may still lurk here." Harry said slowly.

With a degree of reluctance he brought his wand up and began to non-verbally banish scores of sand at a time.

To his relief stone began to emerge the further he progressed, and after half an hour he had uncovered an opening twenty feet down.

It _was_ sealed shut, but he was not concerned by that.

What _did_ concern him was the fact that once more Fawkes seemed to be repelled by some kind of ancient magic dwelling in that place.

"No point to stopping here. Thanks for your help, Fawkes." He called up to the phoenix as he conjured a sturdy and two inches-thick rope which he tied in place to one of the surviving bases of stone on the natural desert floor above.

With that and after descending quickly, he stepped into the six foot tall passage, wand tip lit by a silent '_Lumos,' _and began to cut his way into the stone so that he could vanish the chucks in smaller and easier to manage degrees, given his relatively weak magical core at the moment.

It reminded him in part of the last time he had been so weak; after the duel with Voldemort, at the point when he had gone to his death with every intention of murdering his prophecy-fated archenemy even if it cost him his life in turn.

* * *

><p><em>The screams nearly unsettled him from his determination. <em>

_It seemed inhuman in the intensity of the pitch, the way it drew upon his broken soul and made him yearn for the noise to fade from his conscious thought._

_Their source, as he discovered, came from the small Wireless lining each hall every dozen or so feet, and in the time ahead he would learn that the voices giving rise to that hideous noise came from the Department of Mysteries; a muggleborn family endlessly put under the Cruciatius until their minds cracked, locked with that freakish crystal bell jar within the Time Chamber to ensure a never-ending misery as damaged cells repaired themselves quicker than they could be ruined and back again.  
><em>

_Pushing through his feet carried him to the zenith of the rebuilt Atrium, a fifty foot high circular plane upon which Voldemort sat in his throne of petrified muggle children's bodies, hands clasped together before his face as each thumb hooked up under the chin in distant thought.  
><em>

_Coiled up behind the throne dwelt a still young basilisk entwined about the fell constrictor Nagini, the serpents nearly equal in length and malformed appearances as they copulated heedless of anything else in the area._

Harry's features twisted in disgust at the noise, but his gaze was locked solely upon the albino-skinned wizard in his grotesque structure, the vicious red eyes stirred as if from slumber as he approached.

"I smell you, Harry Potter. You reek of stale death; of aged and decayed leaves, of burnt blood, of rotten soil and maggot infused flesh._" Voldemort said with a pleasant grimace stretching his lips apart.  
><em>

_That much was true, he supposed, given the amount of time that he had been in the grave in Godric's Hallow after Bellatrix's killing curse failed to permanently undo him. _

_The connection between the two of them, his mothers sacrifice, his blood in Voldemort's veins, and the ritual that had bound them so tightly together that even their minds and souls had become linked to some degree; and, of course, the prophecy itself had a hand of its own in keeping him from passing on._

_'_Either must die at the hand of the other. Well, tonight we die by each others hands._' He swore once again to himself, holly and phoenix feather wand clasped firmly between his fingers as Voldemort drew Dumbledore's wand from the inside of the black robes._

"I can not see you, but I can smell you, Harry Potter, and I have lived longer with more power than you could possibly hope to accumulate in your pitifully short seventeen years upon this earth- ah, excuse my mistake; _fifteen_ years upon this earth, and _two_ beneath it._" Voldemort said derogatorily, as if hoping to incite a hasty reaction.  
><em>

_A flash of that white-wand and a bolt of blue tinged with the smell of ozone screamed past Harry's cloak covered shoulder so close that his hair stood on end, and as it collided with a wall behind him the sound of thunder echoed throughout the entire area amid the streak of lightning.  
><em>

_"_You are but a boy, Harry Potter. I should have slew you personally when last we met in this Atrium instead of allowing Bellatrix her grief-stricken assault, though I must admit that defeating Dumbledore was its own reward._" Voldemort continued sharply as he spared a glance toward the wand, cradling it appreciatively in the hollow of his palm and wrist._

_Another spell rushed through the air after a moment more, this time sickly purple, but Harry leaned his head aside as he continued to approach._

_"_Very well. You seek to hide and assassinate me like a scared rat? I will remove your last hope from the world. Be gone, Harry Potter!_" And with those words he rose up, his body vanishing from sight and taking even the wand with him._

_Sweat ran down the back of his neck as his foe disappeared into thin air._

_ And then he _felt_ the foul wizard's magic responding to the small bundle nestled against his natural core, the tiny trickle of stolen magic that had bled into his nearly lifeless body over two years of time, trapped in a magical coma. _

_No doubt Voldemort had received some portion of his own in exchange, but perhaps not given the other was healthy and fully alive for that time frame._

_And then suddenly Voldemort was upon him, and the cloak was as worthless to resist the sickly green curse that seemed to run from the tip of the wand backwards along the spiraling length._

* * *

><p>Shaking himself out of unpleasant memories and unconsciously rubbing the hollow indention in his chest where Voldemort's magic used to be, he realized that he had worked through not one but two sixteen-foot-thick stones and emerged before a set of descending stairs even longer than that across.<p>

The stink of years-old rotten flesh hung in the aged air, and as he stepped further in he could detect what looked to be a multitude of golden objects within.

He might have whistled quietly in appreciation if he actually cared for money, but all that mattered was the metal Book.

He found a chewed-upon human skeleton stretched out in a fairly self-explanatory posture, the fingertips dug into the ribcage and the jaw bone wide in a decades-old silent scream.

Whatever had feasted upon the poor bastard had stripped the body of all flesh and muscle, and not even a single droplet of blood remained or scrap of anything else.

He shook off the heavy feel of the dust laden air with a Bubblehead-charm and continued among the ancient treasures with due caution and a deadly spell on the tip of his tongue for whatever had eaten the last guy.

He did not detect the faint chitinous sound of something small scurrying over the ground, but when several of them swept over the gold he spun and snapped his wand from mid shoulder in a downward slash toward the elbow, his voice ringing out with, "_Incendio_!" as a moderately heavy spray of fire engulfed the affected areas.

He was rewarded by the screaming hiss of several unseen creatures burning alive, but quite a few more made themselves known to him as they fled from the direction of the fire _toward _him; small blue-shell beetles, scurrying at a remarkable pace but more so than that, working together to get there quicker.

He'd admire their cooperation later; for the moment he incinerated the lot of them with a slower pronunciation and wand movement, ensuring a thicker stream billowed out of the tip of his wand when there was only a yard of distance between he and they.

Satisfied after several seconds he let the worst of it abate and swept his gaze around for any more of the fell insects, then pointed his wand at a torch nearby and performed one of Hermione's earliest mastered spells, the bluebell flame summoning.

Her smiling face appeared unwelcome and uncalled for among his thoughts and he quickly banished it before _that_ series of memories consumed him as the others that morning and day had.

"Time to get serious about digging through this place. I haven't all day before they catch up." He said tiredly and set to work.

* * *

><p>The air grew from pungent and fetid to more or less stale the further into the ancient ruins Harry walked, and he had to renew the charm around his head again to keep the worst of it out, continually alighting the torches as he progressed and illuminating the scenes of a terrible battle bit by bit.<p>

Like the poor bastard he had first found, many more such skeletons and even what looked like the leftovers of several mummies dotted the broken halls.

It was a grim sight and a feeling of unease swept through his mind whenever he looked too closely upon things, as if leftover dark magic had left behind a muted scar on the land.

Twice more he had to clear his way through dozen-foot-plus thick stone, and each time it took him longer than the previous one as his depleted magical core ran low.

He paused, panting slightly from fatigue, after working his way to the halfway point of the second stone.

"This.. is getting... ridiculous..." he muttered, stowing away his wand and contemplating the use of Gryffindor's Sword to literally hack his way through.

It would undoubtedly spare him his meager magical-supply until it could replenish itself further, but the physical exhaustion that would come from the process could be even worse for him.

In the end he chose to forgo either route.

"That hole... halfway back... looked promising." He said and stood up from his leaning position, trotting back slowly to examine a dim side-passage off the main route he was currently digging through.

Sure enough after dragging one of the torches free and stepping through it a few minutes afterward he found a fairly good shortcut elsewhere, and from there and following the looping angles shortly came out at the top of an open and unknown pit.

The torch soared through the air a good thirty feet and crashed to the ground with a rough clatter as it rolled some distance more, proving that if the rest of the area so far had been the sight of a battle, what lay before him now was the focus of a minor war.

A multitude of undead corpses littered the brown floor, and the tainted air was palpable with black magic saturating whole sections.

"Whatever the hell went down here must have been about as horrific as the Atrium Duel..." he trailed off uncertainly, not wishing to recall any more of that time.

Against his will, however, the memories once more began to plague him.

This time he forced his legs to comply and backed up against the wall before sitting down, least his body unconsciously pitch-forward on autopilot as he had reacted the last time such occurred that morning.

* * *

><p><em>For the third time in his pitifully short life, Harry Potter was struck by the Killing Curse. <em>

_Like the original, the spell was cast by his fated nemesis, and like the original, it was a union of familiar magic and the same black magic that prevented the intended result from occurring; the bundle of alike-energy next to Harry's own core acted as a shield, however slim, against the worst of the danger as the famed Invisibility Cloak neutralized a slim portion more._

_He was blown off his feet and nearly down the spiraling stairway he had ascended seemingly hours previously, the pain unbearable as it scratched and ate away at his chest in a bid to sink through the opposing forces resisting its efforts._

_In the end, however, after three seconds of an eternity the Killing Curse's sickly green glow ruptured and bled out into hundreds of muted wispy motes. _

_Sickness swam throughout his body as his hazy mind groggily accepted that he was still alive for a few moments longer._

_He found Voldemort standing in place, outline shaped by the faint ripples in the air as his head moved to look down at the hand with the Elder Wand in faint disgust, and rather betrayal in addition._

"I slew your former master... and yet you fail... you fail as my other wand has done, to outwit fate and overcome destiny..._" he said slowly, and the spell masking him ceased as fury appeared upon Voldemort's features._

_Harry could feel it, not in his scar, but in that weak sphere of stolen magic as it pulsed like another heart, and unwillingly with such close ties once more to the host it leeched further strength from him to replenish itself, and the tethered emotions roared through it to nearly incapacitate him._

* * *

><p>When he hazily blinked his eyes open again, the charm around his head had faltered and the air before him reeked with the putrid stench of old-magic gone wrong, the pugnacious hint of darkness among the musty dust an inch thick over everything in sight.<p>

He recognized the feel of it to be the same as that in which the map had been tainted with.

The presence he had at first sensed in the sands overhead continued to radiate around him unevenly, and the light of his fire seemed to weaken for long moments at a time as it flickered over the blood stained ground.

Wearily he conjured a rope and tied it around an empty torch bracket nearby, and with his wand between his teeth and the sword hanging from a slot in his belt, he descended it slowly and carefully.

When his feet touched the ancient ground the feeling in the area intensified around him, and he quickly took his wand up again and held it at the ready should some kind of trap be about to spring upon him.

After a moment he dismissed that train of thought and murmured out the words for a standard fire whip, feeling his physical exhaustion increase as he scraped the middle of his reserves.

It hissed to life and the red and orange glow clashed with the blue flames coming off of his torch to further illuminate the massacre he had unwittingly stepped into.

Half-decayed corpses wrapped in bandages and others in hideous states of brown rot lay in many sections, and he thought he saw the jawbone of one whose hands were still gripping a scimitar much like that of the anubis statue twitch as he cautiously stepped forward.

_'Typical. I'm walking among potential ancient Inferi dotting a ruinous battlefield in the heart of an accursed city of the dead.' _He thought uneasily, eyes dotting around and surveying what he was getting into in relatively rapid succession despite the fatigue.

When nothing else moved he kept half an eye on that particular corpse and looked over the risen stone table in the middle, carefully walking over to it as he laid a hand over the pommel of Gryffindor's Sword.

A few feet away he felt the malignant will focus and stir hazily through the fetid air, and he found his gaze trailing over to a pair of black pools set into the floor.

The whispering he could recall from the Department of Mysteries came upon him as he stared down at them.

It was about that time that he heard the other man cough, someway back and above the way he had descended through.

Harry responded quite quickly as he rolled and snatched up the torch, knowing it would take too long to force out the counter-spell to extinguish it, and tossed the object into the nearest pool before ducking down behind the table and relinquishing the fire whip.

Something stirred to his left in the pitch black around him now and his fist clenched around the hilt of the legendary blade in his hand, raising it carefully in that direction and settling the flat against one upraised knee so that he could thrust immediately if he sensed anything moving toward him from there, or swing it around in an arc if something crept from another direction.

A flicker of light from the same tunnel as he had descended through appeared just over the edge of the table as a voice he thought he would never hear again spoke up, "Dammit, Nott, do you think I wanted that to happen to Parkinson? I warned her to stay out of the Dark Lord's affairs, and now look at where she is; being dissected by those ruddy black-cloaked Egyptians!"

Another and heavier male answered, "Better a blood-traitor's spawn like that get caught up than one of us, Malfoy, and remember your position- _I'm_ in charge of this operation. _You_ couldn't fight your way past Potter when we were back in school." Nott stated sharply.

Malfoy might have sputtered some kind of indignation if this were the past, but he shut up before a retort could emerge and, after several seconds of silence, responded neutrally, "My apologies, Nott."

It was more of the tone he had gotten used to using since their numbers were reduced so severely two years earlier.

For a long moment Harry felt incredulous disbelief that they could have actually gotten into the area, considering what he had gone through in the last two months to do so, but if he had thought that one of them might conveniently explain it away he was disappointed.

"So he has been here." Malfoy stated needlessly as they came upon the conjured rope trailing down from the tunnel to the room he was now crouched in.

Normally he would have already gutted the two Death Eaters, but normally he had his full reservoir of potential and magical strength and right then he was close to scraping the bottom of the barrel.

It could be _days_ before he was back to normal; the Egyptians had a way of leaving behind lingering effects with whatever they worked through magic.

Nott ignored the obvious statement from his partner and examined the wide open room before and beneath them with a sharp gaze. It did not take long to pick up on the footsteps among the dust, or that they faded after arriving at the stone table.

Malfoy might have smiled in his position and taunted Potter, wasting the advantage they currently possessed.

Nott was not Malfoy, and he had lived a far more dangerous side of the game of life.

He pointed his wand down toward the table and non-verbally sent a blasting curse at it.

Even then Malfoy nearly ruined the surprise with his wasteful exclamation, "What are you-" before Nott backhanded him swiftly across the mouth.

The blond man sank back against the tunnel walls in disbelief as blood ran down out of his split upper lip, but whatever else he might have considered saying was erased before the detonation of the ancient stonework.

_Now _Nott smiled, though it mostly did unpleasant things to his face.

A quick gust summoned-up put the rising dust storm out of his concern as he looked toward the ground with expectancies of scattered gore.

The result he obtained for his effort was not quite what one might have hoped for, all things considered, as the gleam of silver flashed in their own torch lights and severed muscle and bone.

Nott's wand arm collapsed down into the open room in a spray of crimson blood before he was jerked forward and thrown out into a thirty foot drop.

"Potter!" Malfoy managed to snarl through the blood gushing over his teeth as his old enemy landed at the entrance to the tunnel and tugged off the invisibility cloak previously wrapped around his form.

He looked ill, steam still faintly leaking from his ears, as the second Pepper-up Potion burned through his veins and sent a rush of energy through him. It was the only reason he had been able to shield himself in time and manage to levitate over to the rope, silently dragging himself up.

"Draco," Harry returned shortly, gaze almost distant and wand arm not quite as steady as he would have preferred as he kept Gryffindor's Sword at the ready in his other.

"Shame about your friend- if the fall doesn't kill him, the venom embedded in the blade will."

Nott had managed one furious, pain-filled shriek as he crashed down atop the same corpse that had unnerved Harry a short time previous, and the blood spilled heavily into its deceased form.

That was, unknown to any of the three living men, something to be very much concerned about given the nature of the rituals committed in that chamber throughout time.

Nott's strangled shouts went mostly unheeded, the noise of his blood gushing out more heavily from a torn throat being ignored in favor of staring each other down.

It was only after the heavy _thud_ of stone being dropped and another degree of moaning, this time from a hollow throat over all-but-vanished muscles and tongue, that both men lowered their respective gaze from one anothers' eyes.

"I thought that corpse was moving." Harry said neutrally as he gestured with the tip of Gryffindor's Sword for the blond wizard to step over to the edge with him.

Malfoy slowly did so, hesitating not only because of the advantage his enemy had but in part due to the fact that he had no desire to stumble and meet the same screaming fate that his former partner had succumbed into.

The Inferius was munching rather seriously on Nott's spinal column by now, sucking the marrow straight from the cracked bones as knotted and gnarled fingers pinched and pulled at flesh greedily, tearing it away and pressing it against its own throat and upper chest.

It was a rather terrifying showing of the minds and the degree in which the ancient Egyptians held toward those who would intrude within their sacred domains.

Malfoy turned and threw up in a corner after seeing Nott twitch feebly again beneath the hideous things ministrations, but Harry only felt a mild ache inside.

"I take it you're here to kill me and take the Book to avenge yourself, Malfoy?" he asked as the Inferius, somehow regenerating from its terrible ritual cannibalism, progressed to slurping the brain out through the canal where the stem ran down to the spine.

Malfoy shot him a dark eyed, sick look, partial-loathing and equally so panicked.

"I figured as much. It's no surprise considering what I did to your parents and extended family at the Atrium two years ago. Well, here's your shot. I'm as weak as I'll ever be, weak enough that even _you_ might have a chance if you put some effort into it." Harry said with a degree of weariness in his tone.

For a long moment it seemed as if Draco hadn't the will.

Then he drew his wand from a holster concealed beneath a sleeve and the severing curse was two thirds of the way past his lips before a mockery of a demented screech rent the air from down in the area below, low and filtered with power.

He faltered in mid-cast and his mouth snapped shut as if magnetically attracted, eyes widening at the noise.

Harry stunned him while the chance was there and looked down to see what in the hell had just transpired below.

The black magic in the air was thrumming, unnatural pulses of it running off like half transparent ripples in a pool as the Inferius dragged itself away from Nott's ruined shell and approached the others laying about in damaged states, speaking roughly in Ancient Egyptian.

Harry realized the reason everyone had been trying to keep him away as black and beady eyes turned to look up at him.

"Bugger."

* * *

><p><strong>End of Chapter Two.<strong>


	3. Half-Chapter 3: Exhaustion settles

Fires burst to life all throughout the chamber near the ceiling in a number of brackets, but Harry had eyes only for the figure glaring toward him ominously.

He recognized the look in those pitiless eyes- and it was not from Voldemort that he made the comparison. He had often seen such an expression reflected from a gaze nearly concealed beneath black and greasy hair, the rising hatred and unbridled loathing for his continual survival the longer they had to endure one anothers presence - courtesy of Severus Snape.

The malignant sense of tainted-magic saturating the air seemed to amplify as the Inferius stood there seemingly gathering its strength. Perhaps it was even savoring the experience of being upright again for the first time in centuries. Whatever the case was, however, he felt a familiar echo of the darkness that had engulfed Little Hangleton during that wretched ceremony several years ago as the Inferius watched him.

A flash of memory almost blinded him and sent him stumbling forward- the sight of the Triwizard Cup landing ten feet away. He exhaled so harshly and hastily, expelling every ounce of oxygen in his lungs, that his vision flashed to black around the edges instead and swallowed the memory whole.

A sense of light-headedness flickered when his gaze returned. It was definitely one of the least appreciable methods he had developed for focusing in the moment and blotting out his past, but he was running out of reliable choices at the moment.

In his temporary blackout the other corpses strewn around the chamber began to stir more heavily as the semi-transparent energies thrumming in the air began to spiral around and settle into position along their forms, seeping through the decayed bandages and strengthening rotted muscles and cracked bones.

It was hardly as horrifying as watching Nott be devoured a little at a time, but seeing the barely-deceased wizard rise up again as a reanimated skeleton set his already wary nerves on a proper edge.

"I think I've seen enough of this," Harry muttered to himself as the Inferius suddenly snapped a hand and pointed one bony digit directly at his heart with a rattle of further Ancient Egyptian.

He barely spared a second to run one last hasty glance around the floor to see if he could spot the Book, but he wasted no more than that as those mummies and Nott angled around to hone in on him.

In his haste to step away he nearly tripped over Draco's useless hide.

"Bugger!" He bit out around clenched teeth. "I swear to you, Malfoy, if you betray me after this I'll gut you like a cod and feed whats left of you still alive to whatever is the nearest deadly animal!" He growled aloud; he couldn't leave the once-rival behind, least _more_ of the same of that first-Inferius arose from feasting on his flesh and doubled the immediate problem.

Slashing his wand through the air, Draco's body shot up four feet and, at the next motion, became featherlight. With that task done and the sounds of something heavy scuttling over stone, he took off down the hallway and trusted the locomotive spell to keep the blond ponce within a reasonable distance and similar rate of motion.

His vision swam for a moment as they passed back into a large hallway. He could feel every drop of sweat gathering along on his forehead and neck, and the reverberations of his heavy boots as they stomped into the hard stone beneath them. His heart hammered against his chest as he sucked back another harsh breath.

"Focus!" He bit out. Before much longer he would without a doubt be out of commission from the magical fatigue and physical exhaustion.

His attention was returned to the other dangers present with the worrying rattle and hiss of a thousand tiny, clawed feet rustling together from deeper ahead of the area. His gaze cleared again in time to see the swarm of blue beetles emerge from behind hordes of golden treasure, and he risked a glance over his shoulder to see if Draco was still with him even as he brought his wand up to his legs and silently ordered the levitation charm.

Draco was leaking from a few gashes in his forehead and hands where he had scraped along the walls, but he was only lagging by a scant few feet. When Harry looked back at the insects ahead of them he was dismayed to notice how they had paused once his own feet lifted clear of the ground and pushed him forward, waiting.

As the gap dwindled they began to rustle again and suddenly began overlapping as they clambered together.

'_You've got to be..._' His thoughts was cut short as he hurriedly sent a blasting curse straight into the middle of them.

He honestly didn't think that he could burn them in time without completely exhausting his draining resources to the limit, and the wall of force was simple and quick.

Scarabs flew apart in every direction and left a narrow trench down the middle.

His breath came quickly and painfully by the time he was forced to drop the levitation spell and slam his shoes to the stonework again only minutes later, feeling the extended depletion begin to overtake the Pepperup Potions'.

It probably wouldn't have hit him so hard if he hadn't been artificially drained to the brink earlier that day; he _knew_ the feel of fatigue should have been staved off for at least another fifteen minutes, perhaps even half an hour more if he was particularly lucky.

Now all that mattered was getting back to the surface outside. Unfortunately for him, a rattling scream broke the air at his back, along with the noise of metal being dislodged and throne aside.

Flicking a glance over his shoulder, he confirmed what he had suspected; more of the lesser-Inferius were clawing and digging their way out from beneath all of that gold. And, of course, the blue beetles were already recovering and scurrying after him.

Swallowing dryly, Harry rushed up the steps and forced out one last spell while he still had the energy for it, "_Accio Rope!_" He shouted.

The long rope ahead of him stirred from its slack position and stretched against the pillar of rock holding it overhead, and he pressed his wand in-between his teeth to free up a hand for digging inside his mokeskin pouch, so that he could finally stow away Gryffindor's Sword.

The chittering of the insects heightened in the confined space, but he felt the rope brush against his free hand and began to physically pull himself forward along its length with every bit of his remaining strength.

In that way he soon had his feet off the ground again, and the blinding glow of the sun warmed his skin as the length turned diagonal from horizontal, and then to fully vertical.

Draco bumped up against the back of his legs, showing just how far he had slown down.

'_Come on!_' He railed against his weakening arms silently, brows meeting together as he spotted Fawkes soaring back and forth in agitation ahead of him.

Then the first Inferius broke through the path and into the sunlight, and with a speed and posture that was almost arachnid in its movement, the blind servant scampered up the wall toward them, the fingers and toes biting into the loose sands rapidly to make up distance in the slippery surface.

It caught up to them just as a lance of metal whistled over Harry's shoulder and pinned it through the chest.

The motion stunned both of them; Harry's desperate climb halted as the Inferius shrieked a single, terrible note, and clenched at the enchanted weapon with both hands even as it's form began to shake and dissolve around it.

A black-garbed hand sank down from overhead and gripped Harry by the shoulder tightly, and drew him up with surprising ease, leaving the two of them staring practically eye to eye. For a long moment raging desperation glared out of their amber depths, before the man to rescue him growled out a threat in Arabic and thrust him aside, where another pair of men quickly dragged him away from the open pit.

Draco followed up and was almost given the same treatment as the former and once-more dying mummy, but the locomotion and following spells saw him land in the sand next to Harry.

"_You utter fool!_" One of the men present swore in an broken English accent.

Another repeated the term, but he could hardly muster the effort to open his mouth, let alone counter with any real thought behind it. An exhaustion that was bone-deep flooded across his consciousness as his eyes slid closed, and as his consciousness faded, the very last thing he heard was the sound of several harried voices screaming in turmoil and denial.

* * *

><p><em>"<em>Where is it, Potter?!_" Bellatrix LeStrange's heavy, almost-manic voice breathed against his left ear as her wand pressed painfully up into his chest. Only minutes before he had been so confident, so full of righteous fury, and now he was laying on his back with his wand no where in sight, a captive to one of the maddest witches to emerge for decades.  
><em>

_Now it was anger at himself as much as her that suffused his mind, outside of the crackling pain focused in the middle of his curse-scar. _

_'_You bloody fool,_'__ he berated himself silently, winching as she dug the tip of that jagged wand against his ribs hard enough to pierce through his jumper and cut into his skin, sending a trickle of blood oozing down the tip. A moment later as the madness burning within the depths of her eyes shone clearer than ever before that night, she struck him across _the face with the back of one hand and then snatched at his hair, forcing his head back.__

"You will tell me where you've hidden it! A pouch? An inner sleeve? Where is the Dark Lord's prophecy?!_" She demanded with a growing sense of terror beneath her present trepidation. He felt the pain in his scar abruptly redouble, crushing the grate in his lower jaw as if it were broken, blinding the searing incision in his chest, and he knew quite suddenly and clearly why it was that Bellatrix was in such a terrible hurry to know - her master approached with slow and lengthy strides, already doubting, already half-guessing what the answer would be._

_Pain roared against his senses as she cast the _Cruciatus Curse_ against him from point-blank range. It was agony of a strength all to its own, filled as it was with her misery and panic, knowing who would be blamed for the_ _disaster here tonight and her failure to secure the Prophecy._

_His skin bubbled and dripped like molten lead captured within the forge, blisteringly hot. Blood vessels collapsed and then ruptured altogether, oozing out of every miniscule pour. His mind was virtually reduced to burning ashes in the grip of her power, but throughout it all, a constant reminder superseded even that - the intensity of the all-consuming pit linking his body and mind to Voldemort's._

"Tell me!_" she shrieked as the elder wizard's footsteps began to reverberate off of the golden water-fountain solidly. Harry could barely breath as she released the curse for a scant few seconds and left him laying there limp in her grasp, eyes screwed up as the mental anguish grew beyond his imagined physical pain._

_Blood truly ran down into his eyes from that old scar as the high, cold voice of his enemy spoke up from some distance off still._ "You waste our time, Bellatrix. I have seen it in his scattered thoughts- the prophecy is lost, sacrificed, just as this last year has been spent in exchange for so little._" He said in that dangerously quiet tone ringing with his power, "_You have failed Lord Voldemort._"_

_She seemed to physically curl inward at that, paling further than she already was, but then in a flash of white and red and gold plumage that he barely noticed, Albus Dumbledore burst into the atrium around them with his white-wand already weaving into motion._

_Voldemort's footsteps ceased as he silently spun in place and slashed his own dark yew wand through the air, deflecting whatever it was that the Professor was trying to do, and suddenly it was just her and him again._

"I will not fail you, master..._" she whispered, half blinded by her own emotions and the insanity brought on by the Dementor's presence. Pushing her wand tip even deeper into his flesh, she uttered the two words of the Killing Curse with a dreadful desire to see him undone. _"_Avada Kedavra!_"

_The flash of green light burned around the wand-tip as she drew it back and was knocked away from his body by some invisible force, and then Dumbledore's own voice shouted something._

_Harry Potter floated up into the air and away from her as a flash of fire lent a single phoenix feather against his body, and then he was gone, whisked away by the immediate Portkey that Dumbledore had cast in an instant to try and keep him from the battle._

_It was too late, nevertheless. Both for that action and to save himself - either one or the other could have been met, but the attempt to fulfill both pushed the cost too high; Voldemort did not pause in his own motions, where Dumbledore had been forced to act outside of them, and in that single moment was all it required to separate the Professor from his phoenix and push the advantage forward._

* * *

><p><strong>Intermission Point A.<br>**

**A/N:**Been entirely too long, hasn't it? Finally cobbled this together from my archives. Most of its dated to 8/30/11 or older - I definitely had a third chapter in mind back when I last updated this. A right shame it's taken me almost two years to get roughly twenty-three hundred words out.

Still, I figure it is better to provide _something_ to reward you guys for your patience than to hold off for a longer piece that could take entirely too much longer to come. I know its not much - but I'm hoping it will help. We'll see Harry back in action and taking on the mummies properly when I get the rest of this chapter done, at which point this intermission point will be cut and the whole chapter merged and replaced over this half-a-chapter.

Thank you.


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